Several months ago, I was reading one of my history books and I came across one of these intriguing endnotes that lead me to another book I had to read. I've been in search of that book since then and only last week finally achieved success. First, I visited the publisher's Web site, found the book and placed an order for it there. A couple days later I received a notice in the mail that the book was out of print and there was no publication date scheduled. (Why the company lists it on its Web site is a mystery to me!) I then tried to find the book using the searches on both the new and used book sites. The book appeared in some of the searches, but all of them said the book was a special order that could take 4-6 weeks. Since I already knew the publisher had none, there was no point in ordering from those sites. I was surprised that I was unable to find the book at any of the used book sites on the Web.

My next step was the library. My local library has a remote-access server that allows patrons to access a number of subscription databases. All that is required is that I type in the number from my library card. (Usually the local libraries require that you have a library card through them, but sometimes libraries participate in a consortium in an area and you may have access if you belong to a member library.) If your library has such a service, check to see if it offers OCLC FirstSearch, which searches a number of different databases for the item you need.

In FirstSearch, I typed in the title of the book and selected Search. In this case, it came back with choices under "Dissertation Abstracts Online," "WorldCat," and "ECO" (a collection of scholarly journals). First, I was interested in seeing if I could get a copy of the book through interlibrary loan. According to Worldcat, the book is held at a number of libraries in close proximity to me, but none of them were interested in lending the book. Since it is more than four hundred pages, I wasn't interested in traveling to the University of Michigan's Bentley Library or the Burton Historical Collection to sit and read the book.

The two listings in ECO were not the title that I was in search of. So, I checked the information under the Dissertation database. Perhaps I could have saved a lot of time and frustration if I had only checked here first, because the book I was looking for was actually a doctoral dissertation completed at the University of Michigan in 1972. The dissertation I needed was listed in this database, but the information you can download is only an abstract. I wanted to read the whole book. That's when I turned to UMI.

UMI has been a depository for graduate level works since 1861 and has a massive collection of theses and dissertations from around the country and from other countries. Its Web site at www.umi.com offers a number of services, but specifically related to this article, you can order dissertations online. That's how I finally obtained a copy of the book I had been in search of for months. On UMI's Dissertation Express page at: tls.il.proquest.com/hp/Products/DisExpress.html, you can order a dissertation if you know the publication number, author, or title. The dissertation costs $31 and arrives as an exact copy of the dissertation that was submitted by the author, meaning it's double- spaced and is printed on one side of the page.

I received the book within a week of ordering, punched holes in the pages, and put the whole thing in a ring binder so I can read it easier. Now I'm happy and am diligently reading this book that talks right to the subject I was interested in.

If you're looking for a bibliographic reference and you've hit a brick wall, check with your local library to see what searchable databases you can access. And, if your reference is a dissertation, don't spin your wheels like I did-just order the book from UMI.

Elizabeth Kelley Kerstens, CGRS, CGL, is the managing editor of Genealogical Computing, editor of the Board for Certification of Genealogists' newsletter OnBoard, the creator of Clooz-the electronic filing cabinet for genealogical records, co-creator of the new family health history program GeneWeaver, and a frequent contributor to Ancestry.